Long an icon of American musical and political life, Pete Seeger has written eloquently in books and for magazines, activist movements, and union newsletters. Although he has never written an autobiography, his life story is nowhere more personally chronicled than in the private writings, documents, and letters stored for decades in his family barn.

In Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, we hear directly from Seeger through the widest array of sources—letters, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories, and poetry—creating the most intimate picture yet available of Seeger as a musician, an activist, and a family man—in his own words and from his own perspective.

From letters to his mother written when he was a 13-year-old desiring his first banjo to speculations on the future, this book covers the passions, personalities, and experiences of a lifetime of struggle—the pre-WWII labor movement, the Communist Party, Woody Guthrie, the blacklist, the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King, the struggle against the war in Vietnam, Bob Dylan, travels around the world, cleaning up the Hudson River, Granny D, Fidel Castro, Bill Clinton, and countless uncelebrated activists with whom Seeger has worked and sung.

The portrait that emerges is not a saint, not a martyr, but a flesh-and-blood man, struggling to understand his gift, his time, and his place.

“Growing up with Pete’s music, I dreamed of making music and being an active citizen of the world. Read this book—and give it to your kids to read.” — Dar Williams